Behold: the first post where I’ve gotten to use the gaming, charity, and godlessness categories all at the same time. One more thing off the bucket list.

A while back Jason Thibeault, who runs the Lousy Canuck blog, came up with an idea: raising money by playing old video games for 24 hours straight. And since he knew I was the undisputed king of atheist retro gamers, he immediately sought my assistance.

We’ll be playing random NES, SNES and Genesis games over netplay, and broadcasting via Twitch.tv so you can watch JT kick my ever-loving ass at Street Fighter over and over again. And we’ve got a ton of guests lined up to chat about gaming, atheism, skepticism, or whatever the hell else seems like a good idea at the time, and if Random Number Generator willing, joining in on the gaming proper.

The whole point of the exercise — well, aside from hanging out and playing awesome video games — is raising funds to give half to Camp Quest and half to the Women In Secularism conference.

The gameathon will take place on December 1st, starting at 12 noon EST. This is the same weekend as Eschaton so we’ll be competing a little bit for Twitter traffic, but we’ll be sure to plan a bit better next year. And there will be a next year, oh yes.

I won’t spill the beans on who all we have lined up to put in guest appearances on the 24-hour broadcast, but suffice that we got some pretty rad folks you know and love. 😀 We’ll all be discussing relevant issues in the news and in atheism, along with gaming lore, so tune in/call in/write in and be a part of the conversation.

We’ve been playtesting whenever we’ve had free time over the last month (which is surprisingly not much) and we’re finally ready to go. We’ve got some old classics lined up, but you can leave suggestions in the comments for any two-player games you’d like to see represented.

I’m trying to think of ways to raise money related to the various games. Should we play competitive games with character select (like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Smash Brothers, etc.) I’m thinking of whoring out my character choices. Like, say, $2 will let you choose the next character I play with, and I’ll play with that character until I win a match (if you want to get a lot of bang for your two bucks, choose Chun Li; I have no fucking clue how anybody ever wins with her. I’d sooner play with Zangief).

Any other ideas? If we were doing something with more than two players (which is still a possibility), I would let people put a bounty on someone. Say PZ Myers is guesting and we’re playing Smash Brothers. Want to see me dedicate an entire match to falcon punching him square in the nuts? This opportunity could be yours if the price is right.

So hit me with ideas that might entice you to part with a few dollars of your hard-earned cash (and throw in some games we may not have thought about) and spread the word! 🙂